


This is Your Creation

by cyanideZero



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 19:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanideZero/pseuds/cyanideZero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Sollux is a genius and Eridan is his victim<br/>AU Drabble</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Your Creation

The small room was illuminated only by a desk lamp and the glow of a laptop, partially obscured by the figure typing away at it. The figure was in bad shape, with dark bruises under the two differently-colored eyes and a scraggly beard shadowing his thin face. His gaze was focused, unblinking on his computer screen as it had been for the last 12 hours. Suddenly, he slammed a key triumphantly and looked blearily at his masterpiece. It was the best work he had ever done, created to control a human and leave enough room for intuition. This would be the culmination of over five years of nonstop work, not including the months of all the legal matters to actually procure a test subject in the first place.

Speaking of the test subject….Sollux heaved himself stiffly from his desk chair and hobbled to the door that led into the containment room. He walked over to the glowing rectangle in the middle of the room without bothering to turn on the lights, and stood next to his creation. The subject lay in his tank of green vital slime that kept him alive despite the raw-looking wires, metal, and newly grown aquatic organs that patched his body. His face was relaxed, so different from the twisted, furious mask the creature wore when he was awake. A purple streak of hair floated about the scars that trailed down his forehead left from the circuit implants. The man had been exceptionally beautiful when he was first brought in, much to Sollux’s surprise, for he was hoping for a semi-healthy hobo at best. He didn’t ask where or how they got the man, but he was happy to get him. It had been rough, trying to coax him to cooperate, and sometimes Sollux had to resort to force. Eventually though, Sollux had taken a liking to the man, and had finally convinced him to tell him his name – Eridan – in a perverted sort of affection. There were memories of intimacy, heavy breathing and soft moans of pleasure, but Sollux pushed them away. It all went downhill when the modifications started. Eridan was in constant pain from the surgeries, and every time he saw Sollux he would snarl insults and attempt to attack him despite the tubes sticking out of the back. He should have been afraid, terrified of the beast he was creating. But he wasn’t. He could never be afraid of Eridan. But the change hurt something deep in Sollux, more emotion than a good scientist should have for his test subject. Eventually he couldn’t bear to see Eridan unless he was sedated, and so the genius saw his subject’s body grow stronger and more animalistic as a spectator to his sleep.

Eridan’s eyelids twitched in his slime, and the grafted fins on the side of his head flared in response to the current flowing through his tank. Something twinged in Sollux’s heart and he gently reached out a hand and trailed a finger across Eridan’s jawline through the slime. Tomorrow would be the last day, the last day before Eridan would be equipped to run fully aquatic missions at impossible pressures and kill normal humans with ease. The last day before Sollux would have to give him up to the people who would poke and prod him, not to improve him, but to see what he could do. There would be no more quiet companiable lunches, sneaked cuddles in the dark, or holding his hand when he was hurting the worst. Or more recently, there would be no more insults, vicious attacks, or wrecked equipment. There would be no more sadness in the place he knew fear should be. Sollux couldn’t even remember the last time Eridan was fully awake; it must have been sometime before his muscles were fully developed. The thing laying in the tank was a wreck and a masterpiece, barely recognizable as a human but so far superior in physical agility. Yet he looked fragile, an inhuman balance of machinery and biotechnology. Sollux had made this. He had destroyed Eridan and built him back up according to his own terms.

Bile rose in Sollux’s throat as he withdrew his hand from Eridan’s tank, and a sadness and uncertainty fell over him.  He walked over to his office and sat next to his computer, where the last code sat, waiting to be uploaded into Eridan’s head. This was the last piece, the piece that would tell Eridan how to use his new body seamlessly, and force him to obey orders. It was coded in two separate parts, and he hovered between uploading both of them tonight, or waiting until his team got back in the morning. His clean hand hovered over the button, and then clicked the one that would habituate Eridan to his new body. He looked out the shaded window at the tank, and saw Eridan’s body jerk as the entirety of the code went into his brain.

Sollux sighed. It was probably time to go home now. He gathered up his coffee mug, a few papers, shoved them into his messenger bag, and headed for the main door. His hand was on the doorhandle when a gulping sound came from behind him. Sollux whipped around and stared wildly around the dark lab. The slime in the tank was rippling, and as Sollux watched, the figure in the tank moved. Its eyes and mouth opened and the gill slits slashed across his ribcage flared. Eridan was awake. Impossible! The slime contained tranquilizers, unless something happened to the supply.

 Sollux cursed and ran towards the tank, only to stumble backward as Eridan heaved himself upright in one jerky motion. His webbed hands clutched at the sides as green slime slopped onto the floor and splashed Sollux’s shoes. The slime clung to Eridan, snapping in tendrils as he pawed at his face, his sharp implanted claws catching on the stitches that outlined his cheekbones and trailed down to his neck where raw purple gills flared. Specks of green flew off them as they opened and closed rapidly, seeking air they couldn’t process above water while the gills on Eridan’s ribs fluttered in the slime ineffectively. Then suddenly, they all snapped shut and Eridan’s heavy frame started shaking with coughs as his brain handled the new code and switched to his lungs.

Sollux was transfixed. It had been nearly a year since he’d seen Eridan animate and coherent. He still remembered the last time, Eridan’s screams of pain after he tried ending the agony himself when Sollux refused to do it despite the pain he knew Eridan’s half-dismembered body must be in. Sollux remembered Eridan’s cursing, his own name among hideous expletives cursing the world, himself, and everyone but the one who had brought this all upon Eridan in the first place. Sollux remembered his fear as they dragged Eridan away; fear of what they would do to him, not fear of Eridan himself. Never of Eridan himself. Sollux remembered the coldness of the glass that he pressed his face against in attempt to see what they were doing to Eridan in the surgery room. He remembered Eridan’s newly glowing yellow eyes flicker and shut as he lay restrained on a cold metal gurney. The cold needle withdrew from his arm and more cold steel entered him, attempting to fix the damage. Sollux remembered the way Eridan looked at him as he was rolled away, how the surgeons knocked away Sollux’s hand when he reached out to touch his creation’s face.

But now his monstrous creation of technology and organisms that should have never been attempted sat before him, glaring at him with baleful yellow eyes.

Eridan growled deep in his throat.

And Sollux was afraid.

 


End file.
